


came voices aloft

by dellaluce



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-11
Updated: 2010-07-11
Packaged: 2017-10-10 12:24:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dellaluce/pseuds/dellaluce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>this is the first song he's ever been dying to get out of his head. (Homestuck/Doctor Who crossover; Dave/Jade if you squint.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	came voices aloft

**Author's Note:**

> written for the short burst of DW crossover fic in the fic thread. set in doc beard's archane universe.

**one.**

He's a musician. It means a few things.

1\. Falling asleep at his mixing equipment with a loop thumping on repeat had been a rite of passage.

2\. Inspiration strikes him at the worst times; he's had to carry a line or melody around in his head for hours, days, before doing anything about it.

3\. After awhile, he just drank the compressed, crackling eddies of trip-hop, dreamed in the mechanical verve of trance, and breathed DnB beat drops like a second kind of air. By the time he was eleven, it had consumed his iPod and harddrive in overflowing gigs and loosely organized project folders that only bloated bigger as the years went on. Now, his life is rhythm and synth and samples spliced by the thousands.

4\. Most importantly, it means that drums.

don't.

fucking.

bother him.

"I would hope not," Rose says, pulling an earbud out with a grimace. "Unless this is another of your futile stabs at fraternal imitation, I find it hard to believe you'd be able to create any of this if drums actually bothered you."

He isn't sure when he said anything aloud and _that_ is what bothers him--and more than he wants to admit. His answer, regardless, is a strained, "Shut up." He doesn't even raise his head from where it's pressed flush against the cool tile of the kitchen island.

"In fact, call me a philistine, but I'm having trouble understanding why this is even classified as music. It's a bit like a chain gang driving railroad spikes into my temples, really."

He finds the analogy eerily evocative and entirely too accurate for all the wrong reasons and it bothers him more than he wants to admit. "Shut up," he says.

"No heartfelt spiritual accompaniment, though. Just--what was it again? 'Let them see your black heart tonight'? Poets laureate, all."

"Do you have a fucking hearing problem, Lalonde?"

She stands there for more moments than he's comfortable with, all folded arms, chilly silence and flensing perception. He counts out the _one two three four one two three four one two three four_ until she finally turns on a pristine, black-leathered heel and click-clacks out into the living room.

Long after she's gone, he finds he can't stop.

"Shut up," he whispers to the tile, to himself, to no one.

It bothers him more than he wants to admit.

**two.**

He knows there's a problem, a screaming, repeating, neverending double heartbeat _one two three four one two three four_ of a problem--and now, laid out flat on the ground with the breath knocked out of him and his throat hurting and his _head_ hurting and his temples throbbing with the rhythm, he can't deny it anymore.

"Dude, I thought you were going to get out of the way!” John's concerned face hovered into view, along with a hand stretched out in offering. “What's wrong?"

He screws his eyes closed; if he can't shut out the _one two three four_, then he can shut out John's uneasy expression which only makes the drumline snap louder. "Nothing." _Everything two three four._

"Dave, you suck at lying. You've been off your game all week. And you're--I dunno, _moving_ kind of different. It's weird. Truth be told, man, I'm a little worried about you."

His eyes are open again and he stares at the offered hand. He goes to take it

_and slides his sword out of containment one two three four easy as breathing take his hand and gut him weaponless never expecting it so naïve and trusting_

and pulls himself to his feet, uneasy and wobbling and more than a little _one two three four_ nauseous. "Sounding kind of gay, Egbert.”

“...What did you say?”

He rolls his eyes, _one two three four_, and replies, “I said _sounding kind of gay, Egbert_. Now who's off his game?”

“No,” John snaps, brows lanced down; he grabs Dave by the upper arm and forces him around. “After that. And why the hell is your sword out?”

His blood freezes. “I didn't say anything after that,” is his weak response. He can't _think_ between all the _one two three fours_ and even without looking down he knows that there's a balanced, familiar heft in his hand and a filigreed hilt rubbing at his calluses, and he doesn't know when or why or how he called it out.

He looks at John, but he doesn't know what to say.

**three.**

_four one two_ three of them sit in the living room, voices hushed and hurried as he listens from the kitchen. They think he can't hear them, maybe, _over the thundering one two three four one two three_ four, or that it didn't matter if he did. He scoffs to himself. A unilateral decision that Dave Strider doesn't get any fucking say in it. Precious.

Anger spikes beneath the scorn, red hot and white knuckled; he thinks they might have been his friends once and here they are, _plotting planning scheming behind his back always one two three four behind his back no fucking respect for his privacy_

Ridged vinyl feels cool under his fingertips and a song unfolds in his head, a tinkling, soothing music box melody that mutes the tripping staccato of _one two three four_ war drums; time cradles him in light and sound and everything, floods him with a rushing, ice-cold injection of relief.

It brings with it a single, wide-eyed moment of sanity. He uses it wisely.

**four.**

He supposes distance doesn't matter when goddamned Jade Harley can slide through space like a second skin, fold it over and over and over and over _one two three four_ like paper. He supposes hiding doesn't matter when goddamned Rose Lalonde can see him wherever he goes, tracing and tracking like an oracle bloodhound.

_dumbest fucking mistake should've taken care of it caught them off guard too late now left a waking trail of time like a goddamn golden glitter first grade art project she sees him one two three for can't run just fight through it_

Jade stands there alone _a bigger mistake an opening the first of one two three four many too easy to divide and conquer when they divide all on their own_, a frown drawing down the corners of her mouth. Part of him wants to make her smile. Part of him wants to slit her throat.

"_Please_, Dave,” she pleads, arms spread _weaponless one two three four too easy too easy too easy_ and ready to take him back. “Come with me. It'll be over soon. I promise."

"Imagine that,” he says in a voice that stopped being his when the _one two three four_ crept into the timbre. “No cryptic, useless bullshit for once. Give the girl a medal."

For all her words, for all the wanting, he shudders with a primal, bloodsick kind of laughter to see the fear in her eyes as he takes one step towards her and she takes one step back.

"Because you're right," he says, face split into a wild, feral grin. "It'll all be over soon."

_over in one two three four one two three four_ and he gives his sword a playful, posturing twirl in his hand.

Reality bends and buckles and she's gone, too quick to process before his temple splits open and his vision melts like mercury into white hot pain. He falls as she pushes him down, as he finds himself weighted by her knees pinning his shoulders and the chilly sting of a pistol-mouth greeting the underside of his chin.

"I'm sorry, I'm _so sorry_ to have to do this to you, but it's the only way, Dave.” She grimaces as she brushes aside a tuft of red hair--heavy with blood--out of his eyes, tracing gently with thin fingers over the outline of the weeping gash on the side of his head. “_We're going to help you._ I'm bringing you back."

The part of him that doesn't want to throw her off, that doesn't want to rake his fingers in her hair and pull until she screams, that doesn't want to cup her cheeks in his hands and snap her pretty little pixie neck, only hopes that the effort isn't wasted.


End file.
